“If you’re going to be in real estate, you have to learn to thrive through adversity,” says Bryn Stroyke, co-founder and broker at Stroyke Properties. With over $2 billion in sales in Manhattan Beach alone, Stroyke has weathered the industry’s unpredictable cycles for more than three decades, building one of the South Bay’s most respected real estate practices.
Growing up in a real estate family in Manhattan and Hermosa Beach, Stroyke initially set his sights beyond residential real estate. After graduating from USC with a business degree emphasizing real estate entrepreneurship, he began his career at CB Richard Ellis but soon found himself drawn to bigger ambitions.
“I thought, if I could do anything in real estate, what would it be? I would love to be a resort developer,” Stroyke recalls. “I wanted to fly into Tahiti for five years and get a project, then fly over to some other island to do it.”
This ambition led him to Hawaii, where he connected with Bruce Stark, a developer who had essentially built the Honolulu skyline. Impressed by Stroyke’s unconventional approach, Stark made him an offer: work for free initially, with the promise of partnership in the first project Stroyke could secure.
The gamble paid off initially. “We put together more deals in the first 18 months we were there than this whole company had done in the last 10 years,” Stroyke says. The company expanded to projects in Seattle, Vancouver, and even New York, where they won a deal against Trump.
Then came the setbacks. The Iraq War began, equity markets dried up, and projects started falling through. The final blow came when the federal government seized their construction lender during a San Diego project, leading to bankruptcy and the closure of the company.
“I had spent three years working for free for the most part, just living off my savings for all these amazing opportunities, and they just got wiped out over the course of about the final 12 months,” Stroyke remembers.
Finding himself newly married with financial obligations and a house in Manhattan Beach he couldn’t afford to move into, Stroyke faced a crossroads. Despite initially looking down on residential real estate from his commercial and development background, necessity pushed him back to his family roots.
“Being kind of a young, cocky guy, I looked down my nose at residential real estate,” he admits. “I was a commercial guy, and then I was a developer, so I really didn’t want to do it, but I had to do something to pay the bills.”
This humbling experience taught Stroyke a valuable lesson about the cyclical nature of real estate. “If you look at many real estate developers, they make it big, they lose it all, they make it big again. That’s a fairly common story in real estate development and in brokerage. You’re going to have times when it’s really good. You’re going to have times when it’s really bad. The ability to persevere through adversity is a critical part of being in the real estate business.”
After what he calls “an attitude adjustment,” Stroyke realized that in an area like Manhattan Beach, with his real estate background, he could be “a bigger fish in a smaller pond” with access to high-end properties. That realization set him on a path to building one of the area’s most successful real estate practices alongside his brother.
The recent Palisades fires have created an unprecedented market dynamic in Manhattan Beach. Located just 10 miles away with similar demographics, great schools, and desirable neighborhoods, Manhattan Beach has become a primary landing spot for displaced families.
“It was so heart-wrenching,” Stroyke recalls. “Every broker in town was working insane hours trying to help these people. You could tell they were wearing the same clothes for five days in a row, their eyes were bloodshot, they weren’t sleeping.”
The impact on the market was immediate and substantial. “We closed about $240 million in January, and it’s a small town. That’s 50% more than the best month ever for January.”
This surge in demand pushed prices up significantly in targeted areas. “We saw prices jumping $500,000 to a million in some of the markets where the Palisades buyers were targeting,” says Stroyke.
However, he believes this is just the beginning of a longer-term trend. “The buyers that we saw were just the tip of the spear,” he explains. “The first wave were people who were incredibly decisive, motivated to get their kids in different schools right away, and had the financial capacity to make purchases without dealing with insurance or anything else.”
With thousands of displaced families and the slow pace of rebuilding, Stroyke anticipates “continuing cascades of buyers from Palisades coming in” over the next several years, putting “upward pressure on prices beyond what would ordinarily happen in our market.”
Like many markets across the country, Manhattan Beach is experiencing what economists call the “lock-in effect,” where homeowners with historically low mortgage rates are reluctant to sell and take on new financing at today’s higher rates.
“You need a compelling reason to sell if you’ve got a really low mortgage,” Stroyke says. He cites examples of clients who are only selling because of major life changes: “I’ve got a client that’s moving to the south of France, and that’s why they’re selling. I’ve got another client that just moved down to Texas.”
This dynamic has removed potential inventory from the market, as some homeowners who would typically sell are instead converting their properties to rentals. “I’ve got folks that would have sold in normal circumstances, but instead, because of the low mortgage payments and the loans they’ve got, they’re just renting their property out. They’ve already left the state, but they’re keeping it as a rental property.”
While January saw frantic bidding wars, Stroyke notes that the market has calmed somewhat in recent months. “With the tariff policies coming into play in April, then stock market jumping around, that’s had a calming effect on the market. So we’re not seeing multiple offers. We’re still seeing stuff move, but it’s not frantic.”
Despite this cooling, prices have largely held firm due to the fundamental supply constraints in the area. “Maybe some of those prices have pulled back a little bit from the highs of January. But for the most part, we just don’t have enough inventory to see a pullback,” Stroyke explains.
As Stroyke reflects on his journey from aspiring resort developer to Manhattan Beach real estate leader, his story embodies the resilience required to succeed in the industry. Through market highs and lows, personal setbacks and triumphs, he has built a legacy that extends beyond impressive sales figures, becoming an integral part of the community he once reluctantly returned to.
For those navigating today’s uncertain real estate landscape, Stroyke’s experience offers a valuable reminder: in real estate, the ability to adapt and persevere through changing conditions isn’t just helpful, it’s essential.
“You’re going to have times when it’s really good. You’re going to have times when it’s really bad,” Stroyke says. “The ability to persevere through adversity is a critical part of being in the real estate business.”
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